


Appointment in the editing room

by captainofthegreenpeas



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Big Brother Mycroft, Education, Fourth wall jokes, Gen, Kid Sherlock, Meta, Mycroft Being Mycroft, Storytelling, Teen Mycroft, mentoring, mini PSA
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-18
Updated: 2017-01-18
Packaged: 2018-09-18 10:31:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9380390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainofthegreenpeas/pseuds/captainofthegreenpeas
Summary: Winter, 1985. Mycroft tells Sherlock the story of the Appointment in Samara.





	

By the light of the bedside lamp, Sherlock watched Mycroft draw the curtains across the large windows at the end of the bedroom. He drew the covers up to his chin. His legs were curled under him, as the bottom of the bed always felt like a bit like deep space, devoid of warmth and feeling and antithetical to the body-warmed cosiness above. Sometimes he would dream of sharks circling round his feet, moments away from a bite. 

“Story?” He asked, not sure what answer he wanted. Father always told him a story when he came up to say goodnight, but his stories did not affect Sherlock the way Mycroft’s did; and not just because his brother told his bedtime story first. 

Father, sunny optimist that he was, always gave predictable Disney endings. Cinderella married her prince, happy ever after. The little mermaid married her prince with the blessing of her father, happy ever after. Sleeping Beauty, Hansel and Gretl, Kai and Gerda, the tailor of Gloucester… happy ending here, there and everywhere.

Mycroft’s stories were Gothic and had an ancient feel to them. He drew on the brothers Grimm, on Chaucer, on Aesop, on Hans Christian Anderson and Hilaire Belloq, not American animators. To hear him tell it, Cinderella’s slippers were of fur, not glass; and in their desperation to fit the slippers, her social-climbing stepsisters sliced off their toes. The sisters of the little mermaid sold their hair to the sea-witch to try and break the little mermaid of her oath’s bond; so the sea-witch gave the little mermaid an enchanted knife to stab her beloved to death with, but unable to do it the mermaid threw herself overboard and was condemned to exist eternally as sea-foam for a thousand years until her fish-half could be restored, one year removed from her punishment every time a child laughs, one year added every time a child wept. As the world is filled with torment, Mycroft claimed, she would be foam forever, but Sherlock was hopeful that at some point the balance must tip just enough for her to go home and be happy. 

“Stories are for children who brushed their teeth properly.” Mycroft rebutted.

(Naughty children were not spared in Mycroft’s stories, either. There was Little Henry, who ate string and DIED (somehow) because of it, Matilda who played with matches and was horrifically burned to death along with her home while her only family, her aunt, watched. Struwwelpeter neatly solved the problem of Little Suck-a-Thumb’s, well, thumb-sucking, by slicing off the offending thumbs.) 

“ _I_ brushed my teeth properly!”

“You did not. You missed the first molar on the left hand side. I can tell.”

“I _didn’t_!”

“Did. Don’t try to lie to me, it doesn’t work.” Mycroft frowned. Disapproval was always a common expression of his; and now it was nearly his default setting. He had been particularly reliant on that facial expression to communicate his opinions in the months when his voice was breaking and his self-consciousness about it had resulted in a de facto vow of silence. What a blissful season that had been. Sherlock had enjoyed himself. _I’ll bide my time, so laugh away,_ Mycroft’s face had said: _It’ll be years, but eventually your larynx will go through the same process. Enjoy your payback._

Now that his voice was fully fleshed out, he used to its full effect to make his authority sterner than ever. It was strange, to watch Mycroft grow. He already seemed old. Even back when he was very little and Mycroft was still prepubescent, Mycroft was always an adult in his mind. Had he not heard adults refer to his brother as a child (mostly Mummy: “I’m the adult here, Mycroft, not you. What I say is what goes.”) he would never have known. 

“I learned my morse code today,” Sherlock said pleadingly. He could never live up to Mycroft’s expectations and inhuman standards, but signs that he at least tried often got him into Mycroft’s good books, or in this case his good story books. 

“Prove it.” Mycroft cranked the thermostat on the radiator, as Sherlock recited. When he was finished, Mycroft shook his head. “Wrong. Three dots-two dashes is the number 3.  “V” is three dots-one dash.”

Sherlock kicked the bed in frustration.

“Recite the phonetic alphabet.”

He reeled it off with ease. 

“Slightly better.” Mycroft remarked indifferently. He noticed some imperceptible flaw in the way Sherlock had folded his clothes, left out for the next day. Mycroft refolded them. “Thirty-nine twelves?”

“Four hundred and sixty-eight.”

“Patella?”

“Kneecap.”

“Clavicle?”

“Collarbone.”

“Toes?”

“Phalanges.”

“Thigh bone?”

“Tibia.”

“Noble gases?”

“Group zero. Helium, neon, argon, krypton, xenon, radon.”

“Hallmarks?”

“Odourless, colourless, low reactivity. Inert.”

“Because?”

“Full outer shells of electrons.”

“The liver secretes?”

“Bile. Alkaline. Neutralises stomach acid. Important for digestion.”

“Key notes?”

“Semiquaver, quaver, crotchet, minim, semibreve. Each one half the speed of the last.”

“Fire.”

“Needs heat, oxygen, fuel. Lacks any of those things, goes out.”

“You’re on fire.”

“Don’t run, increases oxygen. Get to the floor, roll over.”

“Hallmarks of a liar?”

“Tells their cover story chronologically. Struggles to tell it out of sequence, or does so and results in inconsistencies, because they rehearsed it chronologically. Detail in irrelevant places.  Altered blink rate.  Lower voice. Too much eye contact, or not enough. Uncooperative. Barrier objects. Feet pointing towards an exit. Fidgeting or frozen. Signs of nervousness, or enforced calm. Touching the face. Duping delight. Non-contracted denial, distancing langauge. Or qualifying language.”

“Fake smile?”

“Doesn’t reach the eyes.”

“Difference between a code and a cipher?”

“Code is one word swapped for another. Cipher is letter by letter.”

“Or syllables. Good.” Mycroft sat on Sherlock’s bed, crossing his lanky legs. A growth spurt had outpaced his dressing gown, so he wore a blanket wrapped around his shoulders instead. It gave him a peculiarly matronly look. 

He pulled out Sherlock’s teddy bear. “Point on here to where an adult is _categorically not_ allowed to touch you, unless they’re Dr Cribbens and Mummy is in the room. Or Father.”

Sherlock pointed.

“Is an adult allowed to ask you to touch them there?

“No.”

“And if they do?”

“I tell you, or Mummy, or Father. Depending on whose nearest. Now can I have a story?” 

Mycroft sighed.

**“There was once a merchant at the famous market at Baghdad. One day he saw a stranger looking at him in surprise; and he knew that the stranger was Death.  
**

**“Pale and trembling the merchant fled the marketplace and made his way many, many miles to the city of Samara. For there he was sure Death could not find him.  
**

**“But when at last he came to Samara the merchant saw, waiting for him, the grim figure of Death.  
**

**“’Very well’, said the merchant. ‘I give in. I am yours. But tell me, why did you look surprised when you saw me this morning in Baghdad?’  
**

**“’Because,’ said Death, ‘I had an appointment with you tonight, in _Samara_.’”**

Sherlock blinked, then frowned, which made him look Mycroft. 

“I don’t like it. I don’t like that he dies.”

“Too bad. Everybody dies. He died. That’s how the story goes.”

“No, it doesn’t. He doesn’t go to Samara. He goes to… Sumatra. He goes to Sumatra, he’s fine. It was close, but he doesn’t die.”

“He has to. That’s the _whole point_ of the story, that he couldn’t outrun Death. That Death would always find him.”

“This time he did.” Sherlock snatched his teddy bear back. “And then… he decides he doesn’t want to be good and honest anymore. He wants to be a pirate.”

“What _for_?”

“Because he wants to. He becomes a pirate and he sails with Calico Jack and he meets Anne Bonny and Mary Read and he rescues Blackbeard’s wives-”

“He rescues _Bluebeard_ ’s wives, I think you mean. Bluebeard was the one with the wives. Blackbeard was the one with the smoking beard, who had his head cut off and was thrown overboard and swam around the ship three times before sinking.”

“ _Ah ha!_ So you admit he survived!” Mycroft rolled his eyes when he realised how Sherlock had tricked him. 

“He finds the treasure and divides it according to the pirate rules. And Death leaves him alone.”

“You can’t change the story fifty years after its been written!”

“Why not?”

“Oh, so you know better than the author now?!”

“No. I just think it should end another way.”

“That’s not how it works!”

“It’s fiction! His version is no more what _really_ happened than mine!”

“Boys,” Father Holmes sighed. He was standing in the doorway of Sherlock’s bedroom. Somehow in their ire both of his sons hadn’t noticed he was there. He was used to the feeling. “It’s getting late. Mycroft?” His older son rolled his eyes and left for his own room, the tail of his blanket trailing after him. 

Sherlock pretended to listen to his father’s story and pretended to pray with his father’s prayers, but all he could think about was the shadowy figure of Death from the story and his relentless pursuit of the merchant. 

Father kissed his forehead, but he barely felt it. When Father turned off the light and left the room, closing him into silent darkness, it felt like sinking to the bottom of the ocean.

That night he dreamed of Redbeard scratching at his bedroom door, but no-one was there to answer. 


End file.
